THE BOOK (nickname for No Ordinary Seaman in our household) sales are now surpassed 500! It is in the lending collections of 11 public libraries and on the shelves of 14 bookstores. THE BOOK is now also available as an eBook – Amazon (Kindle) and Kobo.

Book Signings for April, May and June 2019

Indigo Grandview Corners in Surrey

Indigo at Park Royal in West Vancouver

Indigo on Robson Street in Vancouver

No Ordinary Seaman – A Memoir has been travelling near and far across many time zones to all points of the compass. I have only recently returned to home port (without THE BOOK), dropped anchor, and taken the time to transfer my journal entries into a report, namely, this blog update.

Here is a bit about the long and the short of these journeys, the highs, and the lows:

THE BOOK has travelled a long  way from home to new readers in Croatia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, France, America, and other lands with seacoasts.

I made a record long sales pitch, traveling to Chile and back, returning home with several thousand unspent pesos (useless to me), that I used for coaxing/bribing my Chilean/Canadian friend to get him to part with his dollars for a book he would not otherwise buy.

THE BOOK also travelled a very short way from home – just up the street actually, & across the street for sales to my neighbours.

I made a very short sales pitch – about 30 seconds – to an old friend I hadn’t seen for near on 50 years. “This I have to read,” said Wayne.

A special high – at about 35,000 feet – was flying to places like Newfoundland and Rio de Janeiro for book tours (self-funded).

But the best high of the year was to stand before the helm of a cruise ship near Cape Horn …

… having presented myself to the Captain as an old seaman, now nautical writer.

Way low on the planet, we sailed across the Argentine Sea, around the tip of South America through the Beagle Channel to Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in the world; there I sold No Ordinary Seaman to a couple of fellow passengers.

A different kind of low was how one of said passengers was feeling while trying to read No Ordinary Seaman in the 25-foot ocean swells in a storm off the Pacific coast of Patagonia.

Do tell your friends to purchase No Ordinary Seaman. Between the covers they will go to sea vicariously; or perhaps they will go to sea for real and take the book along as a manual or guide. Hah; or should you have a copy of your own, well, buy a copy and gift someone. Support a writer. Support a bookstore.

HERE’S A DEAL

Anyone who identifies the single, the only, typographical/grammatical error in Version 2 (the one with the colour photo of the author on the back cover) will receive a FREE copy of Version 1 that has about a dozen such errors which mysteriously evaded me and my proofreaders; in a few years it may a collector’s edition.

CONDITIONS MAY APPLY: Only one winner. Mailing cost will likely be charged. In the event of a dispute about the truth of the error (??) an editor/jurist probably of my choosing will pronounce judgement.

The BC Shipping News, published in Vancouver by Jane McIvor

is a monthly magazine for the maritime industry.

I had the good fortune of having a mini review in the February 2019 edition.

The Blackberry Cove Marketplace in Ucluelet, BC is the latest book vendor to pick up No Ordinary Seaman – A Memoir.

Ucluelet is a small municipality at Barkely Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, known for whale watching, salmon fishing and sea kayaking.

There is more of the same, including wild beach walks and surfing, further down the road through Canada’s famous Pacific Rim National Park to Tofino.

All these activities are best concluded with a good read.

This blog posting was meant to be brief. I appreciate that people spend so much time online these days. I do not want to bedevil my readers with time lost from reading a real book. So get on with that.